Krita
FreeA free, professional digital painting app made by artists
An open-source painting program for illustration, concept art, comics and animation, with a powerful brush engine and non-destructive layers. Install once, never subscribe.
Why we picked it
Krita is one of the rare painting apps driven by working artists. Its brush engine is refined and its pressure handling excellent, so it feels just as good to draw in as any paid tool. Layers, masks, filters, vector text and frame-by-frame animation are all here, alongside a big library of quality preset brushes.
It's fully free and open source — no subscription, no watermark, no account. Install it, pull the network cable, and it keeps working forever. For anyone serious about digital painting who doesn't want to be locked into a subscription, this is the dependable choice.